Denali

From Wikipedia – Centered on Denali, the tallest mountain in North America, Denali is serviced by a single road leading to Wonder Lake. Denali and other peaks of the Alaska Range are covered with long glaciers and boreal forest. Wildlife includes grizzly bears, dall sheep, porcupine, caribou, and wolves.

• Established: 02/26/1917
• Annual Visitors: 594,660
• Size: 4,740,991 acres

Talkeetna Alaska

After a great and comfortable night at Susitna Place B & B, we headed to the Alaskan Railroad Station for our 3-hour train ride north, from Anchorage to the rustic and quaint mountaineering, gateway town to Denali, Talkeetna, Alaska. We chose to ride the train for the views and experience.

Denali, the native name meaning: The High One, was referred to as Mt. McKinley by a gold miner as a political advertisement in 1842, a year before William McKinley became President, but in 2015 the name was changed back to Denali.

Talkeetna is a beautiful little town at the convergent point of three rivers, the Talkeetna, Chulitna and Susitna. Talkeetna is a Native American word meaning “where the rivers meet.”

Talkeetna, an early 1900’s gold rush railroad town, has varying census records. According to a local, in 2009 the census counters were including dwellings that didn’t have full time inhabitants and cabins that could only be reached by hours of snowshoeing to what most called “sheds”. The 2010 census states there are over 800 residents, despite the local’s disagreements.

After checking into Chinook Wind Cabins, we prepared for an afternoon flight with Talkeetna Air Service. A 1.5-hour small plane tour to view the highest peak in North America towering up in the sky at 20,310 feet, Denali. We were also looking forward to landing on a glacier during the tour. A trip we’d booked months ago and another highlight of our two-week Alaskan trip. Sadly, Gary got a call moments before we were to be picked up and was told it was too snowy and cloudy around Denali. The locals say that there’s a 30% Club. There are even tee shirts in the gift shops in town that are printed as such…you are in the 30% Club if you see Denali while in town. 70% of the time clouds and snow block the view of the 20,000+ foot elusive king of the mountain range. Unfortunately, the following day was even worse visibility and our second chance to do the fly over/around Denali was also cancelled. Luckily we all got to see Denali from our Anchorage B & B even though the mountain was 120 miles away at the time! We actually never made it into Denali National Park. The train does stop in the town of Denali at the winter visitor center, so we were just outside the park boundary.

We decided to tour the small historic downtown on foot. We popped into a few rustic building gift shops that were open. Aurora Dora’s, a Brazilian photographer that takes shots of the Northern Lights in a 70-mile radius of Talkeetna, sells her photos – amazing colors, shadowing and angles. We are hoping to take our own photos of the Aurora Borealis in Fairbanks and up north in the Brooks Mountain Range, Iniakuk Lake area, later on this trip. There’s a great little pizza restaurant in Talkeetna, Mountain High Pizza Pie, where we (Sherry, Craig, Gary and I) had a late afternoon meal of Greek salads and various fun pizzas, including artichoke hearts, spinach and goat cheese or Reindeer sausage pies.

We toured the rest of the Main Street area. We saw the old dirt runway where the small planes use to take over 1000 people climbing Mount Denali each year but now, small planes take off just a short ways out of town on a newer air strip. The first climbers arrive late April this year. The highly technical, high-altitude climb has taken 11 lives since 2018.

We stopped at Nagley’s Market to pick up bread, milk, eggs and the like for French Toast tomorrow AM as well a brownie mix! The original early 1900’s planked wooden floor and open shelving general store also houses pelts/furs for sale and the unofficial but well known and accepted “Mayor of Talkeetna”, a beautiful Siamese cat. We walked in fully clothed for an arctic adventure and one of the employees was sitting in a folding chair wearing a ballcap which read: “Ban Idiots, not guns”, donning a sleeveless tee shirt and shorts. He was a friendly guy with a positive attitude but took us by surprise – he would have been a guy we would have expected to encounter in Alabama or Louisiana, not in a snow covered small town in Alaska! The wonderful people that live here are from all walks of life. Young, single mountaineering and rafting guides, elders that have been here all their lives, retired grandmother’s that followed their daughters who are river boat captains sidelining as fire fighters, artists, ex-military, now bush pilots, and young families getting away from the cities. 

Arriving back at our cabin we disrobed our many layers, unclipped our “mini crampons” (chain style apparatus that slips onto the bottom of your boots to allow safe pedestrian travel on icy walkways and roads…highly recommend them!!). We borrowed the DVD version of the 1990’s TV show “Northern Exposure” from the Chinook Wind Cabins office which has been reported to be based on Talkeetna, AK. We made brownies, turned up the free-standing heater and binged watched till bedtime.

The next morning, after making a pot of coffee, baking French Toast in the oven and yet again adding three or more layers to each leg and arm, all four of us headed downtown again. This time we listened to the educational audio tour downloaded on our phones through the historical society, learning about each of the many historic buildings in town. We got our national park book stamped at the ranger’s office and had a fabulous conversation with park rangers about volunteering at the national parks around Alaska. The visitor center and ranger station building is still closed from COVID but the two friendly and informative women that came out on the porch to talk to us spent close to a half hour conversing with us about the town and Denali. The snow continued to float down around us, temperatures in the mid 20’s. We are grateful to be experiencing this beautiful fresh snow and all agree we are also grateful we do not need to shovel, snow blow or have to work in it every day.

We returned to the Pizza Pie for a late afternoon meal and walked to the train station to watch the southbound train arrive in Talkeetna, from Fairbanks. Tomorrow we hop aboard the same train heading north again to Fairbanks. We are looking forward to a world championship ice carving event and possibly experiencing the hot springs before taking a private plane from Fairbanks, 200 miles north (60 miles north the Arctic Circle) to our last adventure on this trip, Gates of the Arctic National Park.

Thursday March 10

We awakened to yet more fresh falling beautiful snow! 

We walked into town with our snow cleats on but the weather was a really comfortable 30 degrees. We had wonderful, made to order crepes at Consumption Coffee. My crepe was made with strawberries, bananas, walnuts, maple syrup and whipped cream. Sherry had a spinach, gorgonzola, apples and walnut crepe. Yum!

We loaded our bags in the cabin owner’s snowplowed truck, choosing to walk the .4 mile to the train station. She had to plow the parking lot of the station. But when we arrived, the railway staff said the train was running two hours late. So, we walked the snow packed road back to the cabin. 

After calling to confirm, we hopped into the cabin’s van, with our luggage that we got after our snowplow driver finished her jobs, and this time rode back to the station. On the way, the driver hit the brakes ever so slightly on a corner and proceeded to be blinded as all the fresh 4 inch thick snow on the van’s roof slowly slid down the windshield, resting neatly and snuggly between the wiper blades and top of the car. Gary jumped out and eventually cleared the windshield. We arrived safely but the motor coach behind us made too sharp a turn and got stuck momentarily. With help from the train staff…all two of them, they shoveled the bus out just in time for us all to board our northbound Alaskan train adventure, through the wilderness to Fairbanks. An almost 9 hour ride from Talkeetna.

We crossed Hurricane Gulch Bridge, constructed in 1921. It’s the tallest bridge on the Alaskan Railway. To build it, they strung cables across, half the crew rode a tram to the other side and both crews built toward one another at the same time. It travels 918 feet across and 296 feet above Hurricane Gulch. The first steel was erected in June and the bridge was open to traffic 2 months later.

The train passes through the halfway point between Anchorage and Fairbanks, in Honolulu, AK. The name came from gold panning miners, back in the early 1900’s, saying to one another that when they struck it rich they would move to Hawaii…unfortunately, no gold , no move, they named the area they were panning in Honolulu and lived their remaining days right there!

The train ride’s highest point is Summit Lake at just over 2,000 ft. With the Talkeetna Mountain range on our east and Denali, in the Alaskan Mountain Range, to our west. Unfortunately, it is completely cloudy and not visible ☹

We enjoyed several sightings of moose. A male (bull) and female (cow), a mom and twins and a small group by a river to name a few. With ice on the train’s windows, late afternoon overcast skies and clicking while on a moving train, the pictures were not great but the memories are amazing. 

We drove by the Denali National Park Village and the Denali NP Summer Train Station which are closed for the season. 

There’s a section of the route where you can flag the train down, at any point, called The Flag Stop Service. The train will stop and get those that live with no road service or those that are doing recreational activities like hunting or camping. We stopped to get some passengers in the middle of the woods. They had been brought to the tracks by snow machine.

Last stop before Fairbanks was Healy, AK where they have the highest income, $86,000 per capita, in Alaska. Some of the residents work in the coal mines, at the Golden Valley Electric plant (coal burning), Denali NP or work for oil and gas extraction companies.

We enjoyed pot roast dinner on the train in a dining car, different from the passenger cars. They had a Bistro as well where you could get drinks from the bar, light fare and snacks.

We will journal about our days in Fairbanks (Northern Lights pictures!!) and post with our Gates of the Arctic National Park.

From the Alaska Railroad brochure:

“….. we believe that the journey should be as spectacular as the destination. Come aboard and be our guest.”